


skin, bones, and soul

by bogbats



Category: Dungeons & Dragons (Roleplaying Game), Forgotten Realms
Genre: Bathing/Washing, Character Study, Gen, Implied Relationships, Introspection
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-09-04
Updated: 2018-09-04
Packaged: 2019-07-06 18:15:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,272
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15891393
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bogbats/pseuds/bogbats
Summary: An aging paladin reflects on her life as a knight of the crown.





	skin, bones, and soul

More than anything else in her life, Justinia treasures her armour. Gleaming and holy, each seam fitted to her since the day she first came of age and had been knighted into House Dupont’s guard, as her father and brothers before her. It is, and has always been, the symbol of her righteousness, her valour, and her most solemn expectations. 

Though in the passing of the decades, the armour has changed, as has her body—now wider at the hips, now with thicker insets stitched into the places she’d found blades often cut through—the burnished plate will forever represent both her faith and her sovereign. 

To wear it is an honour she has never taken for granted.

She runs bare fingertips down its fine detailing, tracing blooming dogwood and House Dupont’s intricate heraldry, then up to the clasp of the cloak draped over its shoulder, which has been etched in the likeness of Torm’s gauntlet. 

Everything that she is, is right here in this suit of armour. Justinia stands before it, regal, her eyes contemplatively downcast, and nude but for the responsibility she always wears like a mantle. It is part of her, and though she has the freedom to remove herself from within it, rarely does she ever desire to.

With the ball of her thumb, she buffs out a smear left over from another day and turns from the rack. Her smallclothes, formal wear, and arming wear each are laid out neatly across the chaise. Primly, Justinia straightens the collar to her mother’s blouse, once, but now her own. The soft falls of the ivory fabric have always filled her with a warmth and nostalgia for a younger time.

Her newly-drawn bath awaits nearby, warming the otherwise austere room with its steam. A thin film of perfumed oil skates across the surface and it clings to her legs when she steps in. As she disturbs the water, lavender and sandalwood come to meet her like an old friend.

Justinia settles at her leisure and silently brushes past the aches and pains of longer years catching up with her. She begins to clean away the sweat and the exhaustion from the day before in long, slow strokes, sloughing away an old skin she no longer has a use for. She washes beneath her nails, in the creases of scarred and aging skin, and wets her hair with her fingers, urging the life back into the strands that stick to her neck and shoulders.

She remains there until the bathwater has run cold. A breeze coming in through the open window catches her by the shoulders and draws her from the basin, after a time, and it teases over her like a lover’s touch until she is goosebumps and glistening oil that hasn’t yet soaked in. 

Justinia helps it along with well-worn hands; long have they carried the sword of House Dupont and Torm’s righteous banner. The oil soothes old injury and new callouses built upon callouses, softening her flesh from the roughened thing it more and more often wishes to become. That is the price to pay for a long life, a paladin’s life. Not once, however, has she regretted it. She dots a few droplets more of the oil behind her ears, at her wrists, and between her legs.

Finally she dresses herself. First in the surprising silk of her smallclothes—one of very few luxuries Justinia affords herself solely _for_ herself, a private luxury, and not without its own sheepish guilt—then her mother’s blouse (now hers), with its comforting ivory falls and soft pearl buttons. 

In the carefully-wrought mirror made by someone’s father’s father, now long-forgotten to all memories but that of the de Vandes, Justinia combs out her hair and discards what comes away in the brush with nary a glance. She touches her cheeks—pinches the colour back into them—and when her eyes fall upon the pot of paint that rests often-forgot upon her dressing table, she pauses. Runs the back of her fingers across its ornate lid.

There is little need for a woman of the crown to pretty herself up. 

The knights to House Dupont’s guard are always handsome and polished, of course—a guard unlike any other, truly beautiful to behold, or so she had always felt, with a touch of pride for her liege and its people. 

But before she had become a knight of the Dupont family, she had been a courtier instead, and prettied herself alongside her brother often and easily. She can’t say she misses it, for she hasn’t strayed far from that life, even now—it is always within arm’s reach—and never has she felt less beautiful for choosing to wear a solemn oath and a blade.

No, she loves those things as her mother had loved her daughter. 

However, today, an exception can be made. Justinia furrows her brows and briskly opens the pot. Yes. In fact, she almost prefers for one to be. 

After a contemplative moment, she reaches for a brush and dips it into the rose-coloured paint. It barely darkens her lips at all, anymore, Justinia now having spent so much of her life following caravans and bandits through the sun-drenched wilderness outside Waterdeep. But she offers her reflection a slight smile anyway, and gently thumbs over the lid before setting it back.

Now the sun has set low enough to spill its glow into the room and across the floor. She rolls her shoulders and stands and turns in a single motion, moving across the room to the plate, which catches the crimson sunset and radiates it back to her, like Torm and House Dupont’s very wills encaptured beneath the steel. 

Her hands seem to move with their own confidence; they reverently pass over the breastplate and fall away. She will have no aid in donning it tonight, but she wants none. Until she has pulled the final buckle taut and draped the heavy cloak over her shoulder, as is only right and true, she wants naught but the calm that resides within her. Tonight, she will not wear the gauntlets, nor the greaves. This is not meant to be a battle. 

She shall wear it, the symbol of her valour, and carry its burden easily. 

Justinia’s hands do not shake as she urges the arming doublet up and over her shoulders, and they do not shake as they bring her hair over one shoulder. They do not shake as she pulls the tawny leather gloves up to her elbow. 

She quells the tightness that threatens to fill her chest and ties the laces over a quickening heart. Her breath only catches the once, at the moment she slips her feet into her boots—suede that reaches up to the thigh, with a low heel. And when her armour rests comfortable upon her, cape draped down around her legs and sweeping the floor… she can stand no taller than she does now. 

Then comes the knock. Severe and sharp, and just the once. Justinia lifts her chin and strides from the room, leaving indigo fingers to slip into the sunset behind her. The hallway has never felt longer. It has never felt so short. 

There is no need to pause at the door, to take a breath before opening it, but Justinia allows herself the moment anyway.

“Ser Dankovsky,” she says then, so prim and so polite, knowing that he disdains it. “How good of you to make it. Right this way, please.”

And the corner of his smile tightens at the sound of her heels clicking on the floor.

**Author's Note:**

> Possibly she was also getting gussied up for a gentleman caller—but at her age, you can do both at once.


End file.
